My Blog Week: Sept 16 to Sept 22

In Sunday’s A Figure from the Common Lot, Élucide is sent away for the night, on suspicion of being pert with Ebrach; on Monday, allegorical poem Haunt of Thieves, part four. Tuesday, a new poem, “Milieu”, first of a series inspired by Robert Lifton’s eight criteria for thought reform. Wednesday, Sequence of Events had Luberta finding herself contacted by a most unexpected person; Thursday, Catastrophe brought M. Clerc to the point of blaming the horror on Paris. In a new episode of The Totem-Maker, Friday, the character’s trial begins. And on Saturday, another new poem, “The Blurbs”, finds a certain ebb and flow in the stylings of genre fiction.

Images on my posts usually have a link to related information (click first image), sometimes serious, sometimes whimsical, sometimes in answer to a direct reference. Since people can be leery about links, I include them here: what they are, what sites they point to.

September 16

September 18

September 19

As the above eye-opening NYT piece (Richard W. Painter, 2012) states, wealthy Republican donors are practicing a sort of protection racket. Members of congress are threatened not only with withdrawal of funds, but with funding instead for their rivals in the GOP, who promise to comply with the donors’ agenda. But this doesn’t wholly answer for the curious abandonment we’ve seen.

Sound positions accepted as truth, stupid things recognized to be so…

Then the congressman/woman turns, publicly capitulates, and begins to speak nonsense.

Possible persuasions, which I offer as suggestions:

1) The “Adult in the Room” idea. Bad things are supported by lip-service for the sake of the dim constituency, but privately set in abeyance, or neutralized.

2) States’ Rights Agenda. If federal policies are appalling enough, states will replace these with their own laws, and the gradual pressure to do so will give more power to state legislatures, over which it is easier to gain one-party control. Once the power is given, it will be hard for the federal government to wrest away.

3) The Legacy. This is the way things are now, this chaos, but things will soon be different; thus, taking a public stand contrary to private thoughts is a minor sacrifice, made to protect the party’s work from being dismantled.

4) The Herd. As long as a plausible representation of great numbers of ignorant, bigoted voters can be maintained, lawmakers can perceive themselves wise caretakers, who use simple images and words to steer the herd in a direction good for it, though the herd can’t understand such matters; therefore, explaining political realities to them is a waste of effort.